Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War

We chat with the new developer of Midway's once doomed RTS

Wednesday 12 April 2006When Stainless Steel Studios was pulled as developer for action-slash-strategy game Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War, the game was almost cast into the black hole of development limbo. But, with Midway's in-house development team now at the helm and a confident summer release on the horizon, things are looking good for this promising genre-bending RTS.

With an exclusive playable demo of Rise & Fall appearing on this month's PC Gamer cover disc - on sale tomorrow - we wanted to know how Midway's team is getting on with the project. So we pinned down Marc Caldwell, producer for Rise & Fall, and gave him a proper grilling.

So, how finished was the game when you got your hands on it? The game was past alpha and approaching beta, but we weren't handed the beta source code, so we had to revert to alpha and start over again.

Taking over someone else's game can't be easy. How have you retained the aims and ideas from the previous developer while bringing your own skills to Rise & Fall?Absolutely. Our main goal is to deliver the original developer's vision as much as possible, while optimising the game play, frame rates, polish and compatibility.